


Prodigal Son: It's All About Malcolm's Mental Health

by stlouisphile



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Criticism, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, my humble opinion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:54:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22776739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stlouisphile/pseuds/stlouisphile
Summary: What is really going on during the episode "Eye of the Needle?" Is it all inside his head? My observations about what we saw and what's implied.
Kudos: 7





	Prodigal Son: It's All About Malcolm's Mental Health

Prodigal Son: It’s All About Malcolm’s Head Space (1x14) “Eye of the Needle”  
These are my impressions on what has happened so far during Season 1 Episodes 1-14 of Prodigal Son. If you haven’t seen the episodes and don’t want to be spoiled, then read no further.  
#####  
I live for the interactions between Malcolm and Dr. Gabrielle Le Deux, Malcolm’s childhood-and-now-adulthood therapist. Every session with Malcolm’s therapist is central to the overall arc of Malcolm’s mental health as well as how his mental health impacts the cases the team is assigned to solve.  
Doctor Le Deux and Malcolm go back and forth addressing the past and present incidences that plague Malcolm. Malcolm contends that turning his father in at the age of ten was traumatic, but even more traumatic is his recurring lucid and nightmarish dreams of the girl in the box, one of his father’s victims who Malcolm just recently had confirmed was not his imagination, but something that really did occur.  
I’m going out on a big limb here to discuss last week’s episode of “Eye of the Needle “(US airdate 2/10/2020) and what I feel are important points to consider.  
Let me briefly recap the following sessions:  
In “All Souls and Sadists” (US airdate 10/28/2019) Martin informs Gabrielle that he feels his ‘mental health is fractured and eroding, maybe past the point of repair.” Gabrielle cautions Malcolm “that his mind is in ‘a fragile state: and although he may be seeing things now (regular hallucinations that Malcolm admits to) these [other] hallucinations, he could suffer from would be far worst, “these won’t be drug-induced or from sleep deprivation, you won’t be able to tell what’s real from what’s imagined. It’ll all feel real.”  
Has Malcolm Lost is Touch With Reality?  
What if, as Gabrielle cautioned him, if he has a psychotic break, all of this feels real to him, but in actuality is not. Malcolm has been through a lot and he might think he comes out “relatively unscathed” we know he hasn’t. And stabbing his father, with a steady hand is surely not going to contribute to his mental health.  
Have the writers and director of this episode upped the ante to play with our perceptions/reality/contexts of events as they so cleverly executed in “Internal Affairs?”  
What if  
The $1M dollar extortion money all of what happens in this episode is NOT REAL?  
What if a lot of what we see is how Malcolm sees it, not as it truly happened?  
What if:  
The live interviews with Ainsley and the unsub on tv are all overlaid with Malcolm’s hallucinations. Or at the least these events did not actually happen as we are led to believe.  
If you fellow my assumptions, then I believe that the writer and director has supplied us with clues to support my conjectures.  
Consider:  
We have been shown time and time again Martin’s scenes in which Martin is taken away from the Whitly household in Malcolm’s flashbacks. In “Eye of the Needle” an additional flashback is included while Malcolm oversees the operation of his father looking down from the operation theatre. He’s thinking about his father reading to him “The Count of Monte Cristo,” with the light carousel reflecting light on the walls. In “Eye of the Needle,” the carousel actually comes to life as Jessica and Malcolm discover the body on the carousel. Coincidence?  
The Umbrellas:  
Jessica’s umbrella is shown to us repeatedly throughout the episode. How Jessica holds the umbrella in the scenes are unusual if you’re paying attention.  
We watch the following unfold: Jessica returns to the place where she first met Martin and talks with the unsub on the phone. The unsub demands she dump the million dollars out. Before dumping out the money Jessica discards the umbrella we clearly see the interior of the umbrella in an crane shot. (Crane shots are often filmed to add significance to the scene in the mind of the beholder.)  
Anyway, after she dumps the money, she becomes surrounded by the crowd trying to get free $100 dollar bills. She is rescued by Gil from the crowd of people trying to pick up the money. Jessica has a completely different umbrella in her hand which has black and white large bars on the inside. The scene makes sure we see the inside of the umbrella. How’d did she get this umbrella? Why are we shown this? (If this is “just continuity error” it is a glaring continuity error! And I demand my money back!  
Let’s continue.  
Jessica and her purse  
The killer leads Jessica to a park where Malcolm and Jessica discover the dead body. Upon seeing the body on the revolving carousel, she drops her purse and she can’t find it. To me, it seems like Malcolm and Jessica are there and the carousel area is deserted. So. How’d did the unsub get that purse? (Again this could be something forgivable, but I expect better writing from PS.)  
The purse then reappears in her chauffeured driven vehicle. She asks Aldopho that he found her purse. He denies it. Now admittedly this may be just poor writing, but it’s a big leap of faith to think that Jessica was in that limousine with the $1 Million dollars, gets out of the car and then later the purse is in the back seat, with Adolpho being non the wiser. The killer is not only fast on his feet, he has the ability to be invisible to Adolpho and Jessica and Malcolm.  
Withdraw a million bucks in under 30 minutes:  
This is IMHO a quibble, but there is no way on God’s green earth any single bank is going to let anyone, even power socialite and grand intimidator Jessica Whitly be able to waltz into and out of the bank with $1 million dollars in cash in hand.  
From someone who actually did withdraw a lot of money in real life: “You will have to wait for your money if you want to withdraw a large sum because the banks, many do not have that kind of cash on hand in their vault. BTW: A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2″ thick and contains $10,000. A million dollars is only 100 of these little things.  
From Quora: If a wealthy client wanted to withdraw $1 million dollars: If he/she walked in off the street and asked for that amount they could easily get it if they would accept it in a certified bank check! If they wanted cash, it would take advanced notice or an extremely special case that would be backed up by the Fed Government (FBI) in the case of “kidnapping ransom”!  
This is standard “procedure” when a large amount of cash is demanded from someone on a tv show, they always say that that amount of cash can’t just be gathered so quickly.  
Further proof that this episode is genius IF these clues are legitimate, OR the writers and directors are playing “cute” and not going to follow up and what they have given us except expect us to accept these truck sized plot holes.  
Stlouisphile/Donna  
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT FROM “All Souls and Sadists”  
All Souls and Sadists this interaction occurs:  
MALCOLM: (SIGHS) They're like slivers of a memory. I-I think something bad happened in this station wagon. I know it's a long shot, but if I can find this car, maybe it will help me remember.  
GABRIELLE: Malcolm, our minds aren't some safe waiting for the right combination. They're messy, complicated.  
MALCOLM: Gabrielle, these memories are real. I'm sure of it.  
GABRIELLE: Okay. Let's explore the possibility that they are real.  
MALCOLM: Good.  
GABRIELLE: That's bad. It means a part of your psyche is built on repressed memories. Like a castle built on sand. Your mind is in a fragile state. My concern is, if you break down too many walls, if you follow your trauma to its source, you could revert back to being that frozen, broken child.  
MALCOLM: How would I know it was happening?  
GABRIELLE: You could start seeing things.  
MALCOLM: Well, I already check that box.  
GABRIELLE: But these won't be drug-induced or from sleep deprivation. You won't be able to tell what's real from what's imagined. It'll all feel real.  
MALCOLM: I'd be psychotic.  
GABRIELLE: Mm-hmm. Lose contact with reality.  
MALCOLM: That's your concern.  
GABRIELLE: You're my concern. Be careful.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I don't write fiction, but I'm good at making up trivia, writing critiques and observations, and creating fan campaigns. Please give me your thoughts on this. I'd really appreciate it!


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